China and India lead in greening of the world through land-use management

Nasa also says the world was greening 2000-2017 https://www.nasa.gov/centers-and-facilities/ames/human-activ... 5% increase in leaf area over the period (from CO2 and land-use changes) https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 The paper for this thread https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax1396 also addresses data generally ending in 2015, and says "all four LAI [Leaf Area Index] datasets exhibited a transition from increasing trends before the late 1990s to decreasing trends afterward (fig. S5)" Those claims appear to be in direct contradiction, and I don't see any immediate way to reconcile them.

Unfortunately this Nature article (https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 ) is behind a paywall, but the NASA summary implies they measured "leaf area". The Science article (https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aax1396 ) claims Leaf Area Index (same or different measure than the Nature study?) "exhibited a transition from increasing trends before the late 1990s to decreasing trends afterward". So at first blush yes, but the details will doubtlessly prove otherwise. If anyone has an institutional login and can post a pdf, please do.

The Nasa abstract link is: https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ames/human-activity-in-china-an... http://sites.bu.edu/cliveg/files/2019/02/Chen-NSUST-2019.pdf And the original paper is here (unfortunately behind a paywall): https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7 It would be great to see the breakdown by country and by category of forestation and planting of crops.

From the abstract of the study[1]: > The greening in China is from forests (42%) and croplands (32%), but in India is mostly from croplands (82%) with minor contribution from forests (4.4%). I can't comment on the sequestration effects of farms, though, beyond my ken. [1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-019-0220-7